Czech Social Democratic Party - How to Reach Success?

This article discusses a question of the success of the "historical" Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) in the 90s. The party was re-estabilished in November 1989. In the era of the first chairman Jiří Horák (1990 - 1993) it was one of the small formations in the Czech party system. Its political rise was connected with a change of the leader. The new chairman Miloš Zeman formed the ČSSD as the crucial left-wing alternative of the right-wing Civic Democratic Party (ODS). The other factor important for the success of the ČSSD was a failure of the reform effort inside the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM). Unlike Polish or Hungarian post-communist, the KSČM has never changed main features of its (neo)communist profile. That is why the ČSSD filled up the largest part of the left political space (from 1996 so far).